Spin-a-Split Questions

[Rusty Fingers]

I've seen Spin-A-Split references in a number of posts now. Its an interesting thought. I think I get the idea: the pot varies the resistance to ground at the connection between the two coils.

Even with the pot at 10, it is still connecting the middle connections of the pickup to ground through 500 ohms, where normally there wouldn't be any connection to ground. Doesn't this affect the sound of the pickup? Would a push-pull pot be better....i.e. only engage the spin-a-split when the pot is pulled up?

For those of you that have installed it, how do you like it and what pickups do you use it with?

 

[Artie]

Re: Spin-a-Split Questions

Basically, you are correct, (except that its 500,000 ohms). The affect of 500k is probably negligble, but you could simply use a no-load pot to remedy that if it was a problem.

I've never actually done it myself, so I'm not sure what the affect is.

 

[Rusty Fingers]

Re: Spin-a-Split Questions

Oops, yes, 500K = 500,000 ohms, now the circuit makes sense to me. Thanks!

That's what I get for thinking about this in the morning before coffee. Time to change the screen name to Rusty Brains (to match all the rest of the parts).

 

[zionstrat]

Re: Spin-a-Split Questions

Have it on SC rails on 2 of my 3 workhorses and the results are so good that I never even thought about the load issue, but a no-load pot would certainly take care of that as artie said-

When I'm after strat sounds it only takes a bit of the 2nd rail for humbucking and although you get almost immediate increase in bass, it's still extremely strat like- At the other end of the spectrum I usually leave it slightly shy of full humbucker, but it's just because I like that sound-

It's a simple mod and the variations it gives you on 1 pup are amazing- Or you want an adventourous mod, it's easy to use 1 pot to roll off multiple pups and the variety will knock you off your feet, but it turns out this is a more extravagnat animal than I orignally understood and you can search arties posts if you want more on that one-

Hope you give it a try- hard for me to understand why this hasn't caught on more, but I guess some can't get by without this pot for tine or vol-